Race, Culture, & Ethnic Diversity

We strive to build welcoming and inclusive programs and facilities where individuals of any race, culture or ethnicity will feel respected. We do this by training our UBC Recreation staff to reflect and challenge their own stereotypes and assumptions. When concerns arise from our participants, we are committed to taking these concerns seriously. If you have suggestions on how we can improve the experience for all of our community, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Resources

Across all of our facilities, programs and events, we strive to be welcoming to all participants while also maintaining safety. We use the law to guide us in our decisions about what is appropriate. This means that when participating at our facilities or in our programs, participants are welcome to wear clothing that they find comfortable and that may adhere to cultural or religious customs, as long as it does not jeopardize participant safety (or the safety/health of others) in the activity.

For example, wearing long sleeves and pants in the Aquatic Centre’s pools and hot tub is allowed, as long as it is clean and not likely to become a barrier to someone’s ability to safely swim.

We recognize that cultural appropriation is an ongoing issue in today’s society and this can be a situation that arises in recreational programming. We strive to address this issue when it arises in our programs. It is important for us to produce diverse programming that offers opportunities for people to engage in physical activity, but in doing so, we would like to find a way to avoid cultural appropriation in our programs. We do our very best to educate our staff and find ways to offer programming that minimizes (and ideally avoids) any level of cultural appropriation.